Blog # 8 Reflections

Yes, I have some reflections.

Blogging started as a "pain" because I don't always like to share. I do, however, like to write. It is an enlightening process. And I am very amusing at times. But taking my creativity creature out is like uncaging Lewis Carroll's mythical Jabberwocky- very strange, unpredictable, and disturbing.

My favorite web 2.0 tool?

It has to be a collection of them- because if I said "YouTube.com" we would all be aghast.But by gory, by gum, if it isn't the handiest little collection of most things illustrated and animated for education! So I'm including xtranormal.com as a wonderful tool for creating movie clips where I don't have to be in the starring role and I can make animations (which I always wanted to do).

I haven't developed the proper appreciation for Delicious bookmarks yet (probably because I'd been using Portaportal.com for 7 years now). But my researching skills (read Google and YouTube have increased significantly). And while I like my new blog and Netvibes, the aggregated info is still very overwhelming, but at least I know where to go when I want to absorb something new. And I need to admit liking my peers' blogs. (There's that whole sharing thing again.)

Probably the best thing I've discovered I like because its so useful and versatile is NING social networking platform. I've incorporated it into my thesis project because it can do what I've needed for a while. I may have even found more tools in a beta program called FireDB and surveymonkey.com should provide me the data I need to collect.

Blog # 7 Second Life

Okay. So we visited the Ballet. Interesting. We met and collaborated. We "chatted". I enjoyed the atmosphere and ambiance.I even saw a review of SL on Discovery HD no ref, but good reviews). Here're my thoughts:

1. I will not drink in a virtual bar. I think that SL mirrors the real world and bars really aren't always very fun or interesting. There are plenty of social places out there in the non-virtual world, some with really awesome music: I will always need these places to balance the time spent in front of a LCD.

2. Typing conversation is awkward. iChat is one thing, but for dialogue I want a face-to-face. And if I have a face, I want vocals. I think the day is coming though.

3. I like the 3D treatment ("builds") of concepts, ideas, environments. I find the complete absence of the organic disturbing. My cat finds it disturbing too.

4. I am as socially inept in SL as I am in person. Like I need more of that.

5. I have felt my brain stretching to encompass this new medium; the world is turning flat again- goodbye aplomb.

6. What I have seen and heard offered as arguments and suggestions for use still smell like a bottle of snake oil, but I will grant that there are some legitimate examples. Heck, I even found myself conjuring how I could apply the app myself in an educational setting.

7. Inevitably though, it is the future. Look at the research on kinesthetic gaming like the Wii platform (and Microsoft's version-Natal). "The times, they are a'changin'"


I think I'll like it better when I'm a hologram. I've always wanted to visit the arctic circle.

Check out my new favs on the right...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNyg1ftMIU

In light and fun of our shared Second Life experience at the ballet last night...

Blog # 6 Communities of Practice

Blog # 6 Communities of Practice

I had no idea what this blogging topic was, and the resources left me wanting. So I did what every good, resourceful student does, and I turned to YouTube.

I probably shouldn’t have closed the site before I started to write this, huh. But I can backtrack. This video was brief and interesting enough to whet my appetite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNgPiFRBlFc
Managing Communities of Practice- Trailer.

It was a good start, but I needed an explanation. So I went to Communities of Practice Explained. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2paN0Ox-Ia0&NR=1
I liked the black and white iconic graphics. It was English, and seemed to work for me.

But I did not go on to the resources afterwards. I am a child raised on Spielberg and Hollywood. I wanted more glam. Actually, I had decided I liked the work that Creative Commons had been doing so far in my education, so I turned to them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb_7hZGaxm8

And here’s what I’m taking away from all of this.

1. I’m disappointed at merely blogging. But I can see its value in contributing and being a center point of communications among a social network, or even a community of practice facilitator! So I am loosing up a little, but sometimes blogging still feels like my high school English teacher trying to get me to
“open up” in my creative writing journal.
2. As a social network creator, I am becoming more sensitive to the issues that may arise for the new members of my network. That is good. I don’t want it to fail, and hopefully I am learning what I need to create my own “Community of Practice”.
3. I have always thought of myself as a facilitator of education, not so much as a repository of all things factual and discrete. Now, perhaps, as an online educator, I can finally realize that image and network with others who view me as such as well.

Blog # 5 Social Media

Blog #5 Social Media

How do I love social media? Let me count the ways…

Mostly it’s a way of righting the social wrongs that have weighed heavy on my heart since the time that I could first start reading, investigating whether or not there were actually starving children in China like my parents said.

The most impacting video was the TED one. Gordon Brown did a lot for me in the reflecting of the impact social networking can do now as opposed to historically. As a Humanities concentrated/concerned student, I studied world history and despaired at the redundancy and repeated mistakes of the human race.

I went on to hate the reporters who had the audacity to share modern tragedies and miscarriages of cosmic justices with me through modern media when they knew by economy of scale, I was helpless to do anything to effect a positive change.

Rosa Parks, we heard about and read about.
Rodney King, we saw on video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROn_9302UHg

Brown shows us a picture of a girl 15 minutes from death and then as an adult spokeswoman. That is a powerful leap from a decade ago when that child would have been another anonymous statistic.

And now I’m feeling as though there is a solution to the equation that puts each member of the network into it. Now I’m feeling as though there is actual, productive power within a social network that doesn’t have to be the exchange of family photos, recipes, and dating services. All of those things are useful, but the transaction costs of interacting, inter- acting has become $0.

This is the amazing part of what I had envisioned decades ago. And it empowers me more, knowing what I can do now, and imagining what the possibilities may be within the next decades.

I used to bemoan the capitalistic, shallow, useless, boring times into which I was born. The renaissance, revolutions, social disobedience, all of these things my young mercenary heart longed for.

On Social disobedience http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qJ1feGOhho
On the Renaissance : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCYYD1jCzcc
On Revolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKFKGrmsBDk
On being a mercenary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC2GzK7Aw4c

Now, decades later, how have I changed? I’ve spent some time exchanging recipes, family albums online, and chosen old-fashioned hook-up with one man for 26 years. But have I changed, or have I just been biding my time, waiting for the world to catch up with me?

It is the latter. And I am readying for the launch.

Important references for Blog 4

references that didn't show up:

brainconnection.com

Connectivism

North Central Regional Educational Laboratory
but why are we looking here if nothing new has been posted in the last 4 years??????

Blog 4

21st Century Literacies. What do they imply?

I’ve learned a few things while researching this topic. The most important one: This class IS Connectivism Pedagogy and should be re-edited to emphasize that point. I’m disappointed that it took me 16 days (1/2 the time) into the class to get “it”; maybe it was outlined in the beginning and I missed it. Oh well. At least the lightbulb has finally gone on.

Second most important thing: Howard Rheingold approves of my thesis project. I haven’t spoken with him personally, yet, but I do follow him on twitter and know how to speak with an expert. Also- WAY COOL that the presentation that we saw was only a few weeks old! And awesome. Depressing for public schools, but awesome for me. More will be revealed later in my webQuest….(she said mysteriously).

The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (2007) literacies:

Digital Age Literacy Basic -
Scientific, economic, and technological literacy
Visual and information literacy
Multicultural literacy and global awareness

Inventive Thinking -
Adaptability and managing complexity
Self-direction
Curiosity, creativity and risk taking
Higher-order thinking and sound reasoning

Effective Communication -
Teaming, collaboration and interpersonal skills
Personal, social and civic responsibility
Interactive communication

High Productivity Prioritizing -
Planning, and managing for results
Effective use of real-world tools
Ability to produce relevant, high-quality products
(from FSO ETC class 08.09)

I reproduced these verbatim for a very important reason: my project design had come to a stand still over the obstacle of curriculum and standards until I saw these. It still amazes me how much my brain can work, learn, create when it has the right tools and incentives. Well, it has, after all, not been used for much for the last decade.

Life long learners is a very personally interesting topic for me, as I suppose it is for all educators. I love how the brain works. I love research about it. I love to apply that research. Since I used the word love 3x already, I figured it was time to indulge my waning attention span to this: Mozart, music, and the brain learning on it from BrainConnection.com. Yeah, I suspected as much. My kindergarteners got ½ hour each day of classical music. But its nice to have the research to back it up. Note to self; I’ll have to incorporate it into my project.

I’m not sure where the lifelong learner vid fits. Some of the points were good- but out of context, some were weird. It was still a nice illustration of making your own vid to teach something.

On life long learning:
1 positive attitude
2 listen
3 read (because you think)
4 go to live seminars
5 learn how to present
6 record yourself speaking
7 record yourself reading (something positive)
8 record yourself making a sale
9 record your own commercial
10 record your own set of sales tapes
11 listen to your own stuff as much as you listen to others
12 spend 30 minutes a day learning something new
13 practice what your learn immediately

Personal Learn Networks? Brilliant. I was doing this myself (of course). But I did realize how important it was to students to show them what/how/why. Good job.

And finally, on skills, I’ve cut and pasted from the blog website on Connectivism

➢ should be the thrust of this course
➢ Principles of connectivism:

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
• Learning3 may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

To reiterate once again that this is the primary, overarching theme of this class and should be more prominently displayed. (In fact, if anyone is listening/reading, there’s a bit of editing I could do as well on some of the other activities pages…)

Blog 3

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Blog #3 Social Literacy

I’ll begin by analyzing these aspects of Social literacy on a single basis first…

Play- All of my resumes and cover letters for teaching positions have always included the actual word “play” and “fun”. The stress-hormone-free brain of the learner is the primary place where I insisted I must work. Including it in my list of demands has probably cost me a load of employment opportunities, but if employers couldn’t abide by it, then I didn’t want to educate in an environment that excluded the most obvious of necessary conditions under which learning could take place.

Performance is an aspect I hadn’t given much thought to until now, though I have been trying to “run simulations” of myself as a student without my prior knowledge while analyzing it from my normal p.o.v. I guess if it’s listed as one of the new literacy aspects, I’ll need to look into it more. In some ways I think I may have been considering it as I was incorporating a metacognitive reflective tool within my research project.

Simulation- this has me once again, and while I’m more convinced that simulations work for trainings and learning, I’m still a little (disturbed?) something about avatars, metaphoric idols (heroes/characters) that are not “cartoonized” versions of the human user. This takes me into serious metaphysical realms which may not be appropriate here, but I guess if they’re not appropriate in my own blog, where would they be? (Kuthrapoli on karma and reincarnation on The Big Bang Theory) And I can’t help but draw the obvious correlation between SL avatars and Halloween, and wonder if the creators understand what they are revealing about themselves, (probably.) and if not, how would they react if it was pointed out to them? But perhaps, like the fabled sleepwalker, it is best not to reveal that to the doer.

Appropriation- this one has me thinking. Did Warhol start it all by his multiple images of Marilyn Monroe in Technicolor? It wasn’t original, but he did it. Rappers are notorious for sampling music into something else. We’re told “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it” or something like that- in other words, take prior knowledge and build upon it. Would Aerosmith have made a comeback if not for RunDMC’s lack of fresh material? I think appropriation is another way of a student’s learning something. It is a lens through which they are interpreting what they see/hear/experience and synthesize it. Should the student then be able to profit by the learned experience? I hope so- my whole philosophy is based in Bloom’s Taxonomy. And I want to be compensated for my creative brilliance at interpreting his work into a new thing. But copyright infringement…

Multitasking. A 12 letter word. Kill it. Kill it now. It is the Edsel of productivity.

Distributed cognition- While I’ve used distributed cognition (unknowingly) for years (envision popcorn, Skittles, pillows and warm cookie smells in the classroom for teaching, I’ll continue to become as creative as possible while transitioning into a virtual teacher. Thank you for reading this.

Here’s a treat.

On Collective Intelligence, in his book Here comes Everybody, Shirky (2008) illustrated several excellent examples of collaborative efforts resulting in an increase in collective intelligence, but even more importantly, resulting in cooperative action. Since I am building a social network, I am giving more reflected thought into the collaborative aspects, trying to facilitate end goals, but leaving them broad enough- through a new appreciation of chaos theory through a social lens. (Fun illustration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe5Enm96MFQ ) Point being: no outcome is completely predictable.

Judgment- this is an interesting topic that seems to be emanating as a by-product of large scale social networks. What is right, good, best interest, wrong, ill-gotten, self-serving, etc. Can I tell you why I think this or where I got it from? No. But it is very interesting this assimilated understanding of how to judge and the merits necessary to do so.

Transmedia navigation- another aspect of my thesis- I am particularly interested in reaching students who can navigate through various media, but are “at-risk” in a new way.

Networking- still learning more each and everyday; mostly from people who are younger than I am; interestingly enough, they are the generation raised by people like myself- who were raised by the people who put up the Berlin Wall and indoctrinated the separationalist agenda.

Negotiation- see above.

Art- The creation of all things creative, originally designed and outputted through synthesis. It’s a beautiful thing. You’ll have to watch for upcoming blogs to really grasp my philosophy fully on this. It is the inverted pyramid’s foundational building block.

Speaking, presenting, formatting and storytelling: mortifying, creative, exquisite, and doable- all in that order for me. But all elements that I’ve incorporated for years in my teaching anyways.

Blog #1

Criteria:
Blog entries demonstrate
engagement with the important
issues raised through readings
and/or class activities

Reflection on what you learned
each day related to teaching with
technology Reflection is not only
or not necessarily what you
learned, but more what you are
thinking about what you learned
(how you might apply it in your
own lives; your frustrations or
joys from what you have learned;
questions you have).

Text shows a very good command
of Standard English and have
some flair and originality.

Linked to a minimum of 2
supporting references.

The Blog:

The TED vid featuring Sir Ken is one of my favorites (I think we saw it in our month one class), because it is a perfectly illustrated narrative of why I went into teaching. The story of the little girl who was a dancer retouched the little dancer/artist in my soul, who still pangs with regret that there were no adults around to listen and recognize my creative gifts. I suppose everyone does what they think best, but what I have learned through all is that one must be true to one's self, live the creative life, and be happy.

I did/do love learning; that perhaps is my saving grace. I do love technology and creating with it. I do feel for students/ my students when they don't have learning environments that work for them. I can identify with that. But out of frustration, the necessity of something completely different can be invented- and by watching the We Think video (
CharlesLeadbeater (2008, February 26), We Think [Video File]. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiP79vYsfbo)
my inner whining started to change. Diversion to Personal Brain for a semantic webbing tool excited me even further (http://www.thebrain.com/) as did other unnamed resources.

First, my fascination with how simply the video was made (probably a write board and excellent script). Then the impact of the "simple" message. Then I started realizing how I could do and change aspects of my classroom with these simple tutorials whether I made them myself or assigned them as projects. Then I started wondering who actually would lose if I was allowed to have a perfected adapted 2.0 classroom.

I started thinking of all of the "difficult" students I had ever worked with. I smiled as I envisioned perfect attendance and them beaming at me as if to say, "My liege." I knew these kids. I was one of them. I knew what I wanted, I know my students want what they want.

That's when I started to become re-inspired tore-consider re-entering the school zone. What if I simply stated what I would teach, under what conditions, using what tools.

I'm still composing that in my head.

video impacts

So, from watching a variety of videos, each with students who have these transparent, puppy dog eyes pleading for my intervention, I may have gotten "IT".

Not the SL "IT", but for many months (maybe years) I have been deeply discouraged by the old educational institutions and ready to chuck it all. I have in fact, "retired" a few times. I want to be a glamorous "Instructional Designer" for a great company. But I knew I'd be secretly wondering about the next wave of employees, unprepared for what I had instore for them...

So, as the August blues loom over us educators as western Florida skies darken before the storms, I find myself considering just what type of position would I want if I went back into the (read through the lines "jaws of...") public classroom.

I can write a descriptive narrative of what my classroom would look like and the curriculum I would teach and the tools I would use, right?

It is possible for the universe to deliver my order, once I place it, though not before...

I think probably that's what I'll do today: descriptive narrative of my ideal classroom...

Maybe tomorrow I'll send it to someone. I'll think about that tomorrow.

Been thinking....

I think my Webquest will be an introduction imovie to my thesis project for my volunteers.

Thought I'd write that somewhere so I could remember it for later...

First impressions

This was easy. I like the interface. I was already a pretty proficient writer; now maybe I'll develop an audience.

I have a limit for information overload- I don't know how much interest Ill have in reading other blogs. I guess we'll find out.